myself certain persons translated, illuminated. There are a few in whom I see occasionally the future being piercing, promising, — whom I can strip of all that masks their temporary relations, and elevate to their natural position. Sometimes I have not known these persons intimately, — oftener I have; for it is only in the deepest hours that this light is likely to break out. But some of those I have best befriended I cannot thus portray, and very few men I can. It does not depend at all on the beauty of their forms, at present; it is in the eye and the smile, that the hope shines through. I can see exactly how —— will look: not like this angel in the paper; she will not bring flowers, but a living coal, to the lips of the singer; her eyes will not burn as now with smothered fires, they will be ever deeper, and glow more intensely; her cheek will be smooth, but marble pale; her gestures nobly free, but few.’
Another was a lady who was devoted to landscape-painting,
and who enjoyed the distinction of being the
only pupil of Allston, and who, in her alliance with
Margaret, gave as much honor as she received, by the security
of her spirit, and by the heroism of her devotion to her
friend. Her friends called her “the perpetual
peace-offering,” and Margaret says of her, — ‘She is here, and
her neighborhood casts the mildness and purity too of
the moonbeam on the else parti-colored scene.’
There was another lady, more late and reluctantly
entering Margaret’s circle, with a mind as high, and
more mathematically exact, drawn by taste to Greek, as
Margaret to Italian genius, tempted to do homage to
Margaret's flowing expressive energy, but still more
